Children and Families Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Our intention in paring this down to background and characteristics is to force people to look at the guidance. The Government tell us that they are strengthening the guidance considerably and will emphasise the need to understand that a child’s ethnicity is an important aspect of their identity. What concerns me particularly about taking ethnicity out altogether is that we will continue to have a large number of trans-racial adoptions. Hurrah to that, I say, as long as the child is going to a family who can love them, bring them up in a caring way and, if there are differences in background, ethnicity, culture and so on, understand how that affects the child. Whether through the Bill or in the guidance, we need to ensure that local authorities, when dealing with prospective parents, are able to investigate whether they are the kind of parents who would understand the importance of that characteristic of the children. I fear that taking “ethnicity” out will not fix the problem.

As my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, there is a mismatch between the cohort of children waiting for adoption and the size of the cohort of parents prepared to adopt them. There is also a difference in the ethnicity of those two groups and that is why, until we can balance the ethnicity of the one group and the other, there will continue to be those trans-racial adoptions. That is why we need to make quite sure that, among all the other wonderful characteristics of those prepared to take the step and adopt a child who needs a home, there is that sensitivity and understanding of the child’s ethnic background. Whichever way we do it, it has got to be done well.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, following the intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, with which I agree absolutely, I warmly support the amendment in the names of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friends on the Front Bench.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has unrivalled expertise. I have only personal experience—I am speaking as the parent of an adoptive child of Asian background—and it is my conviction that any child of a different racial background from the parents is deprived if it cannot identify easily, almost unconsciously, with someone close to it in the way children do. A baby first learns visually to recognise faces. A teenager depends very much on confirmation of his or her identity to develop confidence. A loving home is, of course, all important. I am speaking not only as a parent, but as a member of a support group for adoptive parents, so I am also aware of their experiences. You impose a burden and a cause of stress on a child if ethnicity—as far as is possible—is not respected.

Children survive all sorts of things and I hope we have had a happy family. But that in no way alters my conviction that the Government should pay attention to this need of children and accept this amendment.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, some interesting points have been made by the previous speakers, but one of the things none of us has mentioned so far is the valuable and important role of social workers in this exercise of matching children with appropriate, loving parents.

I worry that by being as prescriptive as putting something like this on the face of the Bill or making guidance hugely prescriptive, we are limiting the opportunities of social workers to be flexible and professional about their assessment. If we need to do anything, perhaps it is strengthening that kind of perception and understanding within social worker training. I have confidence that, if the Government choose to remove this, it does not mean that social workers will not look at each child’s background very fully; and not just the backgrounds of children who are easily identified as from a minority. The assumption that all Caucasian children, for instance, have no difference in their needs is quite ridiculous.

If we are prescriptive about applying considerations to do with parental connections only to the lives of children from ethnic minorities, we are not giving social workers the right to make the proper professional judgments. For example, if a Quaker family adopts a child from a Catholic background, it is just as important for them as it is for people of mixed ethnicity. I am concerned that if we are prescriptive and put something on the face of the Bill and are also prescriptive in the statutory guidance, we may make the situation worse in some cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Whitaker]

I am grateful to the Minister for understanding my convictions, but I was attempting to argue against his proposal that these characteristics should not appear in the Bill. It seems to me imperative that they are there as a signpost. I hope he can acknowledge that.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful. I understand entirely the noble Baroness’s position. The guidance will also state that adopters of a different background/ethnicity may need additional training and support to help them support their child. This will include how to identify and deal with racism. On the matching process, it will ensure that the adopters can engage with the cultural background, heritage and ethnicity of the child. We will take my noble friend Lady Benjamin’s point about the importance of the child’s life story—the life book—and ensure that this point is in the statutory guidance. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Eccles for his support for this approach.

We do not think that having ethnicity in guidance but not in legislation is confusing and we are funding the British Association for Adoption and Fostering to provide training seminars for all local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies on this matter and the rest of the adoption reform programme. Training to support ethnicity issues will be part of the 2014-15 sessions and places at these sessions are free. Of course, good matching is important for all children and all adoptive families need access to adoption support at different stages of childhood. We are addressing these issues for all adoptive families and the guidance will reflect that. We will also add other issues that may arise in our discussions with the NSPCC and other experts. During the consultation I will put a copy of the consultation document in the House Library and send a copy to former members of the Select Committee. I hope that many of you will respond. To make that as easy as possible we would be delighted to host a round-table discussion with Peers about the guidance.

However, improving outcomes for black children is not only about adoption. For many, fostering will be more appropriate: three-quarters of all looked-after children are in foster care. For others, it will be special guardianship with a relative or former foster carer. Where adoption is the right outcome for black children, we must do better to find them families as quickly as we do for other children. For those children for whom adoption is the right permanent outcome we need action on several fronts. This includes recruiting more adopters generally, including from minority ethnic communities. This year we have given £150 million to local authorities through the adoption reform grant to help boost adopter recruitment and £16 million for the voluntary adoption agencies to help recruit more adopters who can meet the needs of children needing adoption. For example, Southwark has come up with innovative ways of recruiting adopters from the black community.

There will be better training for professionals. We have appointed BAAF to provide training on a range of issues, which next year will include ethnicity. Places are free for all local authority and voluntary adoption agencies. There will be better adoption support. We know how important this is, not only when the child is first placed with the family, but also later on, perhaps when they are dealing with the trials of adolescence and maybe, as my noble friend Lady Benjamin alluded to in one particularly moving case, questioning their identity. In September 2013 we announced a new fund with a contribution of nearly £20 million to help adoptive parents access the best possible support to meet their children’s needs. This fund will be rolled out nationally from 2015 but will be trialled from next year. The investment will make a difference to adopters in providing the support they need and better guidance, and I have explained the steps we are taking here.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said so incisively, we have, I believe, complete consensus right up to, and including, the point of diagnosing the problem. The issue is precisely how we change a culture of behaviour, but we have no intention of moving away from the importance of the child’s cultural and ethnic background. It is imperative that these are taken into account on every front.

I hope that we do not vote on this matter. That would be unfortunate given the nature of the matter that we are dealing with. I am personally committed to spending as much time as possible with my officials, the NSPCC, noble Lords and other interested parties to ensure that we get appropriate guidance in place to enable this matter to be handled in a way that takes into account the best interests of the children so that, on the one hand, their ethnicity is fully taken into account in all placing and matching decisions and, on the other, they are not left on the shelf and short-changed by the system, as many are now.

I hope noble Lords will agree that we are all very much in the same place and that statutory guidance gives us the scope to steer social work practice in a more nuanced way than through blunt statements in the Bill. On that basis, I hope the noble and learned Baroness will withdraw the amendment.

I now turn to the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley. I am grateful to my noble friends for their innovative thinking on this matter, proposing to remove references to age and sex from Section 1(4)(d) of the relevant Act. I understand the thinking behind the amendment, which I believe is designed to remove from legislation any of the specific characteristics about a child, and rely wholly on the phrase,

“the child’s background and any of the child’s characteristics which the court or agency considers relevant”.

After careful reflection, I do not propose to follow this line of thinking at present. This is because there is no evidence that there is an issue with the way that the courts or adoption agencies are interpreting the words “age and sex”. There is a fairly technical issue at play here. Clause 2 seeks to remove subsection (5) of Section 1 of the 2002 Act. This is a requirement which applies only to adoption agencies—that is, local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies—when placing a child for adoption. Subsection (4) of Section 1—what is known as “the welfare checklist”—applies to the court as well as to adoption agencies, so seeking to amend this suggests a change for the courts as well as for adoption agencies.

In addition, this provision in the welfare checklist reflects an identical requirement on the courts in Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 when considering orders under that Act. Therefore, if we were to change the wording in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 in the way suggested by removing the reference to age and sex, that would send a strange signal to the court as it would suggest a different decision-making process under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 from that under the Children Act 1989.

However, in the end I come back to the very serious issue we want to address: the delay that black children and other ethnic minority children experience while waiting for adoption. As I said at the beginning, we have today paid tribute to one of the greatest advocates of racial equality ever. I listen frequently to the wonderful speech given by the other great advocate, Martin Luther King, which in my view is the greatest speech ever made. It is not the “I Have a Dream” speech, which everyone thinks of, but the one he made two months before that at Cobo Hall in Detroit in June 1963, which was then the centre of popular music, in which he used that wonderful musical analogy that all God’s children, from base black to treble white, are equally important in God’s world and on God’s keyboard. However, that does not seem to be the result in terms of the outcomes for black children in our adoption system, and this Government are determined to change that.

It is the requirement on local authorities and other adoption agencies at Section 1(5) in the Adoption and Children Act which—albeit it was placed there with the best of motives—I believe has contributed to the delays that black children face, as I think all noble Lords have acknowledged. The statutory guidance gives us the opportunity to provide much more nuanced advice and guidelines which will benefit all children being adopted, not just those who are visibly different from prospective families. For this reason, I urge the noble and learned Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may very briefly add a few words of support, particularly to the last amendment in this group. Good transference of these provisions around the country would be an opportunity for the Government to deal with a fairly ancient wrong. It has always been difficult and has always been seen as too difficult, but if we can embrace it now we will go forward and take on board something which runs through a lot of this legislation; namely, that it has genuine cross-party awareness and support at heart. Even if this amendment is not perfect—even the noble Lord can make an error in drafting—I hope that we can say something positive in this regard. If we can go forward and see how it can be addressed in the future, that would help everyone and would probably make people’s lives a little bit easier.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

I speak in support of Amendment 175A in the name of my noble friend Lord Touhig. I have in mind a particular group of children with disabilities who move and I am not sure whether this amendment exactly covers them. If the Minister is going to say that Clause 47 covers the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, will he clarify whether Clause 47, or the new clause proposed by Amendment 175A, would cover the situation of travelling children? This might be the child with disabilities of a showman who is based in one area, say, for three or four months over the winter, and then moves every few weeks to wherever the parents’ have work. The care plan needs to be transferred to each local authority. I had thought that Clause 47 might cover that, so my first question for the Minister is: is that covered? My second question is: if he entertains my noble friend’s amendment about children who move residence, as opposed to moving where they live from time to time, would that cover the situation of travelling children who return to a base but only once a year?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and other noble Lords who have either moved or spoken to amendments concerning education, health and care plans. I welcome the opportunity that these amendments give to discuss the EHC plan, as it is a vital part of our reforms. For the first time, it will provide a single plan across the whole nought-to-25 age range, and will be focused on how education, health and care services will work together with families and young people to secure improved outcomes for children and young people.

Turning first to Amendment 144, I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, to ensure that family support is included in an EHC plan. The EHC assessment process will consider the needs of the child or young person across education, health and care, including the circumstances of the family where there are social care needs for someone under the age of 18. For example, if, based on family circumstances, social care provision is required under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to meet the child’s special educational needs, it must be specified in the plan.

The existing duties will continue to mean that children and young people receive the assessment they require for their needs, supported by the new duties, in Clauses 25 and 26, for local authorities and the health service to integrate and jointly commission services for children and young people with SEN, and by chapters 4 and 7 of the draft code of practice, which focus on multi-agency working to produce a joined-up EHC plan.

I turn to Amendment 147. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is right to want to ensure that educational psychologists are involved in decisions about EHC plans for young people aged over 18. Doing so will assist local authorities in making evidence-based decisions on whether remaining in education will be the best option for individual young people and whether they continue to need special educational provision.

This is why we have already made it clear in Regulation 6(1) of the draft assessment and plan regulations that educational psychologists, along with other relevant professionals, must be consulted when local authorities are carrying out an assessment for an education, health and care plan for any child or young person, including for young people aged over 18. Further detail on that is set out in section 7.7 of the code of practice. The noble Baroness raised quite a few detailed points, and I think that it would be better if my noble friend Lady Northover wrote to her on those. She asked about the training of educational psychologists. The Government carried out a review of training in 2011 and, as a result, has put the arrangements for their training on to a secure basis, including central funding for the National College for Teaching and Leadership.

I fully understand the intention of my noble friend Lord Lingfield through Amendment 147B. It is vital that EHC plans provide consistent, clear and specific information on outcomes and provision. Draft assessment and plan Regulations 11 and 12 and chapter 7 of the draft code of practice set out detailed requirements and expectations about the preparation and content of EHC plans to ensure consistency, including that provision should be specific, detailed and quantified. In addition, Section 3.3 of the code provides details on the information, advice and support that must be provided, including trained independent supporters where appropriate.

My noble friend commented on the format of the plans. I repeat the commitment of the Minister for Children and Families to protect existing rights and protections. That certainly includes being specific about the provision to be made. However, I am not convinced that a standard format is itself a right or protection. It is better to leave flexibility to design plans around the needs of parents, children and young people.

I do not believe that it is helpful to have prescription in the form of a standard template. We have left flexibility for local areas to design EHC plans best to meet local needs. To ensure consistency, we have included in section 7.9 of the draft code of practice a list of the key information that every EHC plan must include in distinct sections, including arrangements for monitoring progress. Having skimmed it a few hours ago, I have to say that it is comprehensive. We have also been working closely with pathfinders to develop and publish example EHC plans.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. For anyone who knows anything about the system, even in passing, it is brilliantly obvious that we should have had something like Amendment 70A in the Bill. If a child has been excluded twice, it is statistically almost inevitable that there will be a problem, and he or she should be assessed so that the problem can be identified accurately.

We all carry a degree of history with us in this Room. Mine is of dyslexia. The standard way you identify dyslexia is by the difference between spoken and written language. If you cannot speak correctly, the chances of identifying that person as dyslexic go down. We know there is comorbidity. You have to get into the system and look in the round. It is very important.

I have interests to declare. I have used voice recognition technology for years. It requires a degree of use of language verbally to have a way of dealing with that problem. We should thank the noble Lord for bringing to our attention the fact that everything about communication levels starts to come together in the spoken word or the written word. The way these things hang together is always complicated and difficult. It gets more difficult to deal with them the later they are identified.

To say thank you to the Government, I think that Clause 22 is the most radical and brave thing I have seen in a Bill for a while—saying that we will go out and identify those with special educational needs. Most of the special educational needs lobby has been about saying to the educational establishment, “Oi! There’s a problem. Come over here and give us a hand”. I have lost track of the number of times I have had conversations with Members of both Houses of Parliament about dyslexic children and grandchildren: “How do you get the help?”, “Who do you go through?”, “What’s the matter?” and “Do we tell them they have a problem or not?”. Identification here is very important. Making that a stronger duty, despite the fact that it might be difficult, will make the rest of it easier. You cannot help someone if you do not know what the problem is. I very much support this amendment and the sentiment behind it.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I record my support for all these amendments and declare an interest as the patron of the British Stammering Association. In particular, I urge the Minister to take on board Amendments 70A and 77. I shall cite three pieces of research. The first is from his own department, almost a year ago. It found that speech, language and communication needs were significantly under-identified among children. The other research is from the organisations that form the Communication Trust. Language development at the age of two is shown not only strongly to predict children’s performance on entry to primary school but to link to outcomes into adulthood. That means employment prospects as well as education. Tied to that is the fact that language development in the early years has a significant impact on the behaviour and emotional development of children. We are talking, of course, of an adverse impact—anti-social behaviour. The final fact is that too many children enter school without their speech, language and communication needs being addressed or even identified. These deficits are already known and it is imperative that the Bill should take more account of them.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 80. Clause 22 requires local authorities to identify whether children have special educational needs. This amendment would require local authorities to publish data on children identified as having that need or disability and provide a breakdown of this data by type of need. Accurate data on the number of children in their area are vital for local authorities to plan and deliver services effectively. The draft SEN code of practice, particularly in the section on joint commissioning, outlines the importance of local data sets to identify the needs of children with SEN and inform decision-making. Currently, data from different sources for the same area can vary wildly. Inaccurate data can disproportionately impact on the planning for and delivery of services for children and young people with low-instance conditions such as visual, hearing or multisensory impairments. To give one example, figures on the number of deaf children vary by as much as 30,000.

It is frustrating that a huge amount of energy goes into collecting data for different data sets but none is effective in bringing together a single set that gives reliable figures. Consideration should be given to a simplified, joined-up and less bureaucratic approach, starting within central government. There are three different ways in which data collection could be improved. First, schools and local authorities could be asked to record in the school census whether a child has a disability, as well as formally identified special educational needs. Secondly, a child’s unique health identifier could be used in education and social care as well. This could capture whether a child has a sensory impairment. Thirdly, disability registers could be improved and have greater ongoing oversight. The department needs to review how data on children with sensory impairments more widely are collected to a reliable standard and used to reform the planning and commissioning of SEN services. A welcome commitment from the Government to exploring this further would be of real benefit.

Schools: Admission Policies

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is quite right. According to the five A* to C statistics, including English and maths, 65% of pupils at Catholic schools achieve five A* to C grades, as opposed to non-faith schools, where the figure is 58%. At level 4 of key stage 2, 85% of pupils at Catholic schools achieve a pass mark, as opposed to 78% for non-faith schools. I agree that Catholic schools and all faith schools contribute strongly to our diverse education system.

[Baroness Whitaker]

Will the Government ensure that the duty to promote community cohesion works in religiously selective schools now that that responsibility has been taken away from Ofsted and the governors themselves may not value it?

[Lord Nash]

All state-funded schools are required to promote community cohesion. Under the draft citizenship curriculum, pupils will be taught about diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the UK and the need for mutual respect and understanding. Schools are also free to teach pupils about such issues in PSHE. All state-funded schools are also required by law to teach a broad and balanced curriculum that promotes the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils, and Ofsted’s inspection framework includes a focus on this.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, in this Bill, which has many good things, I wish only to signal that where children with communication difficulties are concerned—I declare an interest as patron of the British Stammering Association and indeed as a long-term practitioner—there is more work to be done.

For instance, there is a risk that the proposed changes to SEN services will end up excluding such children. Most children with speech, language and communication needs do not have statements and so will not be eligible for education, health and care plans. If school action and school action plus are replaced by a single category of SEN, they will lose out.

They may also lose out if a local authority uses the qualification “wholly or mainly” in allocating healthcare that is associated with education or training to duck out of providing it for children with communication needs, as my noble friend Lord Touhig observed. I know that the Government claim that this provision maintains existing case law, but I ask for the Minister’s confirmation that lawyers agree.

There are some admirable attempts to join up government at local level, but they need to be really effective. Joint commissioning arrangements between local authorities and clinical commissioning groups are welcome, but the duty must be strong enough to actually deliver support on the ground. Similarly, local offers should reflect local joint strategic needs assessments and there must be arrangements for them to be monitored. Any why should the inspectorates themselves not be required to co-operate? The duty to co-operate in Clause 31(2) has a big get-out clause in it which we will need to look at again.

Personal budgets may not be appropriate for the kinds of provision that these children need. They risk fragmenting commissioning routes, so a measure of quality assurance would be important.

I remind your Lordships of the crucial importance of ease of communication for our children as they navigate school and the wider world. The report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties last February emphasised the severe adverse implications of communication difficulties for literacy, mental health, behavioural problems and employment. Four out of five young people not in education, employment or training have speech, language or communication problems, as do very many of those excluded from school, as well as so many of those in custody, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, explained in his penetrating speech earlier. Over 1 million children have speech and communication needs not caused by external factors such as having English as a second language.

Not to invest in effective provision produces problems that are costly to solve, as well as distressing for individuals. As my honourable friend John Cruddas said recently, in speaking of social investment:

“Some of the largest returns have been in improving children’s ability to communicate”.

We must ensure that the Bill enables that.

National Curriculum

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, after that very helpful broad sweep I will focus only on design, because its importance has not been sufficiently realised. I congratulate the Secretary of State on his decision to broaden the measures for judging a school beyond English, maths and science to the pupil’s eight best subjects. This enlightened and far-seeing decision leaves room for design to become a subject of choice and for the fostering of centres of excellence, which will be much to our national advantage.

However, the curriculum that is proposed needs some rethinking. Many others think so, not least the 100 professors who wrote to the Daily Telegraph last Wednesday. They pointed out that the skills of problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity are losing out in the battle to raise standards. A proper design curriculum would go far to fill that gap. I should say at the outset that no one wants to lower standards, and that the Secretary of State’s attempt to entrench rigour is well understood. However, the whole of the design community, from practitioners to academics, is united behind wanting a more relevant—in fact, a more rigorous—syllabus. The Design Council has spoken of a “lost design generation” if this element of the curriculum is not brought up to a modern standard.

For a start, there are two syllabi that feature design: art and design, and design and technology. This is confusing. The idea of design in both syllabi falls far short of what design means now. In the art and design syllabus it seems to mean only the use of material and techniques for executing works of craft and art. The design and technology syllabus, too, concentrates on materials and includes cookery, mechanics, maintenance and horticulture. There is nothing about digital technology, one of our most promising design developments, and there is a perfunctory nod to our great national tradition of invention and design. It says that pupils should,

“investigate the rich history of design and technical innovation”.

I wonder what the pioneers and icons of that tradition, Sir Humphry Davy, Watt, Stephenson—or Sir Jonathan Ive—would have thought of their great expertise being exemplified by classes in maintenance and a balanced diet.

Why does this matter? Excellence in design is—at the moment—one of our great national strengths. We export more than £45 billion-worth of design-related goods and services to the EU alone and about £18 billion- worth to Asia and beyond, providing more than 900,000 jobs. Design-related goods and services make for about 4.5% of total UK exports. We have a truly world-class capability in design and it is highly export-facing. None of that will last if we impoverish the design curriculum in schools. It would also betray our historic prowess in innovation to forget, and allow our children to forget, that it was our great tradition of industrial and architectural design which created the economic basis for our place among developed nations and, I would argue, quite a lot of the social and cultural basis too.

How should design be taught? Good model syllabi have been presented to the Secretary of State by the Design Council and professional design organisations. To summarise: design is a problem-solving, multidisciplinary and collaborative process, which places the user’s needs at its centre. Of course it uses materials and techniques, but that is subordinate to developing the capacity to make an idea for solving a problem into a reality. It is a sound intellectual basis for many other capabilities and it fits its pupils to become active citizens and agents of change. Its relation to art is not the technical mastery that artists require to realise their vision, but rather it is the bridge between arts, science and technology, which enables the making of innovatory products and services. The hundred professors might have been talking about design when they concluded their letter by saying:

“Schools in high-achieving Finland and Massachusetts emphasise cognitive development, critical understanding and creativity”.

I urge the Minister to ensure that their message is listened to.

Children: Speech and Language

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords—

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. We have been waiting for the government response to this quite excellent programme since last June, and I remind the House that it consists of a report, two volumes of findings, four thematic reviews and 10 technical reports, which have been drawn up by experts over a considerable period and represent an absolute mine of evaluation, information and advice. I feel that we have not yet heard who will actually be responsible for driving the whole thing forward. The Minister mentioned the Departments of Education and Health, but there is also the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Work and Pensions and others whose contribution must be aggregated to make the best of what is in this report for all the children in this country.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I agree with noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that this is landmark research which is undoubtedly the most extensive of its kind into the subject. The issues that it raises are so wide-ranging that they are clearly not the province of one agency or government department, as the noble Lord says, which is why we want to make sure that the research is widely available and disseminated as widely as possible. My department and the Department of Health are working closely with the Communication Trust to co-chair the communication council which the Communication Trust is facilitating. The council brings together representatives from government, local authorities, health agencies, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, early-years settings, and schools, parents, young people and the voluntary sector. The council will keep up the momentum by developing a comprehensive dissemination plan for the research, sharing learning about effective approaches to supporting children with SEN and promoting better awareness of speech, language and communication needs.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, my profound apologies for over-eagerness, especially in view of the noble Lord’s excellent question.

The Better Communication Research Programme places great emphasis on regular monitoring of children’s language development over time so that when they need support, they can get it in the right way. How will the Government ensure that the need for regular monitoring is reflected in local authorities’ local offers?

[Lord Nash]

We regard the solution to this issue as a local one. That is why we will be setting up the local offer involving children and young people with SEN and their parents and we will publish details of where parents can find all this available in one place. As young people will have an education, health and social care plan which will be reviewed every year, this will monitor the issues to which the noble Baroness refers.

Schools: Pupil Premium

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords—

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that almost all Roma children, no matter how poor they are, do not qualify for the pupil premium because their parents may not have been here long enough. What can the Government do to remedy this manifest inequality?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I understand how dear a subject that is to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. The reason that we have gone for a single and simple measure of eligibility, based around free school meal status, is that we think it is important to keep the pupil premium as simple as possible so that we can learn the lessons and not make it too complex. The best proxy that we felt that we could have was economic disadvantage, because we know the difference there is between how the poorest children achieve and how better-off children achieve. That is why we went for that simple measure.

Education: Development of Excellence

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, apart from congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, I should like to congratulate the Government on their safeguarding of design in the primary school curriculum and on their support for Sir John Sorrell’s Saturday schools to encourage design experience. Design is a sure but not widely understood means of developing general excellence in education because it fosters many key proficiencies, not only the traditional ones of literacy and numeracy, but the ones we particularly need now for the success of our economy—the capability to realise a plan, innovate, collaborate and recognise what the user wants. I also congratulate the Government on commissioning Darren Henley’s excellent reports on musical and cultural education, which drew attention to the mysterious capacity of skill in one creative activity to stimulate confidence and achievement in another.

As for secondary education, I understand the need for a focus on core subjects, but a narrow grouping will not fit our children for the modern world. As a matter of fact, it betrays one of our mainstream British traditions, which is that although Britain is no longer the workshop of the world for all sorts of reasons, and nor is there scope now for the classically educated colonial developers of the world, we have always been and could remain the designers of the world. I am thinking of our inventors from Richard Arkwright to John Logie Baird, Ada Lovelace and Sir Jonathan Ive, to name only a very few, and of our pioneering architects, such as Inigo Jones, who brought Palladio’s designs for homes back to England, thus transforming our domestic architecture. Indeed the Palladian tradition emigrated to Britain with Inigo Jones and later the architecture of the Scottish enlightenment, at least as much a triumph of architecture and design as it is of philosophy and literature. Design was an integral part of that classical tradition.

But we have tended to neglect design in our ideas of the grand English educational tradition, unlike some of our European neighbours. Like technology, it does not figure in Thomas Arnold of Rugby School’s curriculum, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, pointed out. Indeed, most of our inventors were outside the classically educated élite tradition, and came from the non-conformist strand of our culture or from Scotland. But design excellence is nevertheless a dimension of our distinctive variant of European history. We have still a reputation for producing the most innovative designers and the best institutions for teaching design, but this is now vulnerable to intensive investment abroad in courses and institutions. To nurture and preserve our adult attainment, we need to maintain a stream of school participation and the explicit valuing of design as a discipline.

In sum, we are selling ourselves short if we do not include design in formal classical education, and that is quite apart from its close connection with economic growth.

Young Children: Language Development

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend about the importance of books and reading. It is also the case that technology can play a crucial part in helping children to read, particularly some of those who have the greatest problems from a special educational needs point of view. I do not think it is an either/or choice, and I do not think my noble friend was suggesting that. I agree that getting children to have a love of language is vital, and I say that as the child of what in the old days was called a speech and drama teacher. I grew up with that, and I know the way that it can help.

[Baroness Whitaker]

One of the problems of children who have a language disability is the lack of integration, in relation to speech therapists, between the health and education services. What can the Minister do to make that better?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, one of the consequences of the approach we are developing through the SEN Green Paper is to address precisely the point that the noble Baroness raises: how to integrate health and education services better. As she will know, our ambition is to move to an integrated assessment and a single health and education plan over the next few years.